A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

The flemish minister president has declared that he has charged a specialised agency to buy - when ICANN has everything in order which is by far the case - a domainextension for the flanders region. 

Which domainextension will be bought is still open for debate. The extreme flemish nationalists propose .vla but there are two problems with that. First is nobody outside of Flanders would know what it stands for and secondly the best joke would be koeien.vla (cow shit in flemish). 

The other normal extension would be .fl but the problem is that untill now two letter extensions have been exclusively used by full states and not by regions - even if as is the case in Switzerland, UK, Germany and many other states the regions are nearly states. Maybe ICANN could rethink this exception during the discussions about which new domainextensions would be acceptable. 

Another possibility that is being discussed is .flanders and with that possibility we arrive at the real core of the discussion about a new domainextension for the region. Once you have made the decision to buy your own domainextension you have to ask yourself what you want to do with it before you begin chosing or proposing alternatives. Because sometimes you can't choose. 

If you would use your domainextension to promote your region internally you must take a domainextension in your own language. That would be .vlaanderen and nobody else in the world would understand it or know what it is all about. But that would not be important because the strategic decision was to rassemble the flemish content and websites under one umbrella. 

If you would use your domainextension to promote your region internationally, than you would have to choose an international extension like .flanders and than the local nationalists would be quite angry because how can you promote a nationalism based only on language if you promote it internationally only in english ? 

I think the best thing would be for ICANN to liberate not only the domainextension but also to give regions also the possibility to use a two or three letter domainextension. Otherwise it can become too difficult to build a base of longterm institutional domeinextension owners.

If that isn't the case, than there will be some hard discussions and some long reflexion ahead of us.